


Pop Goes The Weasel

by decadent_mousse



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Anxiety, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Trauma, Established Relationship, I think....... that's about it, M/M, Memory Issues, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-Uprising, Psychological Trauma, Recovery, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-16
Updated: 2018-04-16
Packaged: 2019-04-23 13:21:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14333316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/decadent_mousse/pseuds/decadent_mousse
Summary: Newt is having a rough night.





	Pop Goes The Weasel

**Author's Note:**

> I had planned on finishing up another WIP yesterday, but then some stuff happened and I ended up writing this instead. It's not very long, but here it is!

Every time Newt woke up, it was in pieces. Sometimes he put them back together faster than others -- fast enough that he barely even noticed when it took him a second or two longer than it maybe should have to remember where and when he was. Other times, it took... longer.  A bad enough episode could throw off his entire day. Sometimes it'd take hours to fully sort his shit out -- if he did at all.  
  
This was one of those other times.   
  
It was dark. Dark enough that he couldn't make out anything but the muted edges of the bed, what might’ve been a window.  For a second -- a few seconds (honestly, a few minutes) -- he had no idea where he was. Manila? Hong Kong? Wrong decades. He thought. Maybe. It felt like he was at a Shatterdome -- he wasn’t sure how, but it did -- but that didn't really make sense when he should’ve been at his-- their apartment?  Wait, no.   
  
He fumbled around in the dark until he cracked his knuckles on the bedside table that was, apparently, there.  Then he fumbled around the surface of _that_ for his glasses.  They weren't there.  Great. So not only did he have no idea where he was, but his glasses were missing, too.   
  
Maybe he was at MIT.  Maybe he'd gone to a party.  He'd had a little too much to drink, collapsed into a strange bed somewhere, and misplaced his glasses.  That made sense.   
  
Didn't it?   
  
Everything felt fuzzy and weird, like his head had been crammed full of cotton.  He could feel the panic starting to set in and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to stop it because, honestly, it felt like the appropriate time to start panicking.  There was something seriously wrong -- more wrong than usual -- with his brain. Maybe... maybe drifting with the kaiju had been a bad idea, after all. Both the first time, the second time, and all the other times.   
  
_Wait, what other times?_   
  
Okay, he needed this -- whatever “this” was -- to stop. Right now.  He felt like his brain was a fucking merry-go-round and it wasn’t stopping to let him off.  He felt like he was suffocating.

Or drowning.

He pushed himself upright a little too fast and felt, for a second, like he might pass out.  Not enough oxygen was reaching his misfiring brain cells. There was movement on the other side of the bed.  The sound of sheets sliding against each other. For a second, his anxiety ramped up about ten to full-blown hysteria because he had _no idea_ who or what was in his bed with him.

“Newt?”

And he would’ve recognized that voice, fuzzy with sleep, anywhere at any time no matter how out of his head he was which, at this point, was _very_.

Okay.  Okay.

So if Hermann was here--

That narrowed it down, but not by a whole lot.

Newt didn’t say anything, and Hermann must’ve realized something was wrong because he sat up.  

“Are you alright?”

That was a loaded question.  A _really_ loaded question.  One Newt himself didn’t really have an answer for because, on the one hand, he was pretty sure he wasn’t in any immediate danger of dying or anything, but on the other hand he had no idea what the fuck was happening.  

“Um.  I can’t find my glasses.”

“You--” Hermann sighed softly.  He didn’t even sound annoyed and something about that made it feel worse.  It made Newt feel like _shit_ and he had no idea why.  It felt like something he should probably know.  Another slipped gear in a pretty huge pile of slipped gears tonight.  “You don’t wear them anymore.”

“Oh.”

And that seemed like a really stupid thing to start crying over -- especially when he wasn’t even sure _when_ he’d stopped wearing them or _why_  -- but it was happening.

Hermann wrapped his arms around him and Newt let himself be gently pulled into an embrace.  He had to admit: crying into Hermann’s chest made him feel just a little better -- not great, but more grounded, at least.  The situation felt a bit more solid, more real and less like some weird nightmare, and the pieces slowly started clicking into place.  And, oh, his life actually kind of _was_ some weird nightmare.  Huh.

“I’m fine,” he said, finally, convincing absolutely no one, probably -- least of all his boyfriend.  “I’m just-- I’m really pissed off about my glasses. Aliens cut up my eyes with _lasers_ , Hermann.  Nobody asked me first.”  He was babbling, but Hermann didn’t seem to mind.  “Do you think I could sue somebody? For not making sure it wasn’t an alien hivemind hijacking my body and forging my signature on whatever documents I-- they signed?  Is there a law for that?” 

“I’m almost certain there isn’t,” Hermann replied.  “But you’re well within your rights to be upset about it, regardless.”

“They took-- they fucking stole _years_ of my life.”

“I know.”

He softly ran his fingers through Newt's hair. Newt closed his eyes and tried to slow things down a little.  He took one breath in and one breath out, and then another. He listened to Hermann's heartbeat until his finally started slowing down to match it. He had no idea how the guy could be so calm after getting startled awake by Newt’s massive breakdown.  
  
Unless this happened often. He had a feeling it might and he felt terrible about that, too.   
  
Eventually, Hermann laid back, dragging Newt back down onto the bed with him. He pulled the blankets in around them and Newt found himself cocooned in a soothing warmth.

“It’s going to be alright.”

“How do you know?” Newt whispered.

"I don't," Hermann admitted.  "But I know you. You've never given up on a thing in your life.  I'm confident in the odds."

Newt was pretty sure that wasn’t true.  He was pretty sure there were things he’d given up on, at some point.  Plenty of them. Small things, petty things, big things, important things.  He couldn’t remember any specific ones offhand, but then again, he couldn’t remember a whole lot of most things right now.  He didn’t think he was as strong as Hermann was giving him credit for, but if Hermann believed it, he guessed the least he could do was try to believe it, too.  

After all, Hermann had always been pretty good at calculating odds.

**Author's Note:**

> While it's honestly probably the least of Newt's problems right now, I can't help but think of how horrifying laser eye surgery would be, like, in general because LASERS, but also especially if you experienced it while in the backseat of your own head while having it done against your will. ...Yikes.
> 
> Picked the title because it felt like a good euphemism for "completely losing your shit."


End file.
